Talking to a private TV, the Information Minister said there was no need for the Prime Minister to meet secretly as both the prime ministers had met each other at different occasions in front of media.

He further asserted that it was impossible for any Prime Minister to meet another secretly as they lead delegations and have very tight schedule.

The clarification comes a day after opposition politician Imran Khan lashed out at PM Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi for holding a secret meeting in Kathmandu last year, and called both leaders ‘cowards.’

"Leaders do not need to hold meetings in secret. They do not need to lie; in fact they must be credible," the PTI chief said while addressing a leaders’ conference in Lahore.

The revelations regarding secret meeting were made in a book called ‘This Unquiet Land — Stories from India‘s Fault Lines,‘ by Indian TV journalist Barkha Dutt, who alleged that Nawaz and Modi vanished for an hour to hold a meeting inside a hotel room on the sidelines of a regional summit hosted by Nepal last year.

The meeting was allegedly facilitated by Indian steel magnate Sajjan Jindal, who is the brother of former Congress MP Naveen Jindal.

Both the Pakistan and Indian governments have rubbished reports of such a meeting, terming news reports on the matter "baseless."